Captured Devil's Blaze MC Book 1 (30 page)

In a way her life was good. It allowed Emily to graduate high school early since she pretty much only did school work in her spare time, when she wasn’t making new designs. But she was also able to take a few online courses to get her degree, and at eighteen, she was officially done with school. Her mom was happy at the law firm and Emily was happy with her designs.

Until that fateful day. Everything was ruined then.

Her life. Her chance at finding her own happily ever after.

It was all gone.

Having not seen her mom in the nearly two years she had been gone, Emily tried to keep tabs on her through the website the firm had that her mom worked at. She at least knew that her mom was now a Legal Secretary. It made her happy to know that even though she wasn’t there, her mom was doing well.

Pulled from her thoughts when Dane shut the truck off, she saw that they were at the police station. Getting out and looking around Emily blurted out, “Oh, I don’t fucking think so.” before trying to make a run for it.

PUSHED

A. F. Crowell

BOOK ONE IN THE TORN SERIES

www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

PUSHED
Copyright © 2015 A.F. Crowell
 

All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.

ISBN 978-1-942886-70-9

A.F. Crowell Author

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Chapter One:
Leila

The ER was relatively quiet for a Friday at 4:45 a.m., especially since it had been raining for the better part of the humid summer night. I was a four-year veteran of the Shock Trauma Center at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Over the years I have seen it all, so nothing surprised or rattled me anymore.

Well, nothing until this Friday morning.

I was changing my scrub top for the first time that shift when a call came in from paramedics in route. I caught only the last few words,
“GSW to the chest with massive blood loss, five minutes out.”

Adrenaline started to pump through my veins, as it did every time they had a ballistics trauma in route. In the back of my mind, I cursed myself for being excited at someone else’s horrible misfortune.
But this is my job and I’m damn good at it
. My best friend, partner in crime and fellow trauma RN, Barb Kelly, walked up to me as I was entering the locker room.

“Hey Lei, did you hear there is a GSW in route?” she asked with a little too much enthusiasm.

“Yeah, I was just gonna change really quick, it’s still five minutes out. My last case was this huge biker with a superficial laceration and damn if he wasn’t a big baby. The guy jumped at the sight of the lidocaine and knocked over the Betadine, which of course spilled all over me.” Pulling the wet scrub top over my head, I tossed it in my locker.

Barb glanced over her shoulder, heading to the bathroom. “See ya in there. Oh hey, did they announce which trauma room they are putting him in?”

Talking through fabric as I pulled on a clean ceil blue scrub top, I told her, “Nah, I wasn’t really paying too much attention. All I heard was GSW and I knew I had to change quickly so I could be the first one in there and beat you. I haven’t had my adrenaline fix tonight. And before you ask, no, the big biker baby does
not
count.” I stuck my tongue out at her with a giggle.

Barb chuckled and rolled her eyes as she closed the door to the bathroom. “Well, let me know which room. There is enough to go around.”

I shook my head and started out the locker room door back to the pit to see where the charge nurse had assigned the incoming trauma. On the way down the hall, the call came overhead, “
Incoming GSW two minutes out trauma three
.”

Damn, that was on the other side of the ER.

“Well, there is no way in hell I am running down the hall in my Danskos,” I muttered under my breath. The last thing I needed to do was the Dansko roll on the way to the only really good trauma of the night. They are great shoes if you’re on your feet for twelve hours at a time, but definitely not for running. I picked up the pace, careful not to fall, but enough to beat Barb there. That’ll teach her to stop to pee.

I reached trauma three with time to spare and went about setting up the room just so. Then I gowned up, got on my gloves and ear loop mask, then put on a pair of glasses. Ten hours into my last twelve-hour shift for a week and this case was probably going to take me right to the end of shift.

The overhead speaker called out again, “
Leila Matthews please call three-four-seven-six
.”

UGH. Who the hell wanted me right now?

I was on my way to the nurse’s station to answer the page, when I heard the paramedics calling out vitals and running down the hall with the trauma. As I rounded the corner back into the trauma corridor, I saw way too many cops for a single GSW.

My heart started pounding as it always did when I saw that many cops in the ER clumped together; it meant the GSW was an officer.

Silently, I said a prayer for the fallen officer. As I approached the room and pushed my way through the army of men, I could hear Dr. Miller hollering out orders.

“Page the trauma surgeon on call STAT. And call the OR and get a room ready now!”

Chapter
Two:
Leila

I made my way into trauma three to see Mary and Derrick rushing around working on the patient. I ran straight to the phone on the wall and paged Dr. Drake Thomas to the ER. I called up to the OR and had them start prepping a room the way Drake required for GSWs. As I turned back around, my whole world stopped and the bottom dropped out.

No way. This couldn’t be happening. I rushed to the side of the stretcher and gasped in horror. “Drew, oh my God, Drew. Talk to me Drew, can you hear me?”

Mary looked up at me. “Leila, what the hell? Do you know this officer?”

Tears were streaking down my face. “This is my brother. Drew.” Turning my attention back to him, I grabbed his hand. “Drew, can you hear me? Please open your eyes.”

Derrick came around the stretcher, grabbed me and tried to pull me back, but I fought out of his grasp.

“Leila, you can’t stay in here, you know this. He’s your brother. You’ve gotta step aside. Let us help him. We’ve got this. You know we’ll do everything we can to save him, but you gotta go.”

Turning around, Derrick got the attention of one of the SWAT officers that came in with Drew. “Hey man, can ya please get her out of here, she doesn’t need to see this.”

Jasper Smith, sergeant of the narcotics unit, stepped forward and scooped me up in a hug, and guided me to the glass front door that was swung wide-open. “Leila, I tried to reach you in route before we got here. I didn’t want you finding out like this.”

Jasper was a fifteen-year veteran of the North Charleston Police Department and had kept an eye out for Drew over the last ten years. Jasper had been Drew’s sergeant when he started with NCPD, at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Drew eventually moved out of Narcotics to the K-9 unit and now onto the SWAT team, but they stayed close. Jasper and his wife, Donna, had Drew and I over for many Sunday dinners. They didn’t have any children of their own. So after Mom died, they sort of became our surrogate parents.

I took a deep breath to try to regain my composure, but failed miserably and ended up rattling off questions like an interrogator. “Jasper, what the hell happened? How did this happen? I talked to Drew before my shift and he said it was gonna be a quiet night. Y’all only had one warrant to serve and it would be a piece of cake.” Fisting Jasper’s shirt, I cried, “How’d he get shot?”

Standing back, Jasper scrubbed his hand down his face. “We got shitty intel and…I don’t know. It’s like they knew we were comin’ or somethin’. We always hit these houses at crazy hours, when most people are sleeping, so we’ve got the element of surprise. But these fuckers were waitin’ in the house for us.”

Shaking my head, I couldn’t process what he was saying. “I have to find out what’s going on with Drew.” I turned and stalked back toward trauma three and was met just outside of the door by Barb.

“Oh no, don’t tell me I missed all of the fun. The patient didn’t come in DOA did he?” Barb joked, and then stopped. “Wait. Leila, what the hell is going on? Why are you out here?”

“Barb, you have to get in there. You have to help him,” I demanded.

“Leila, you aren’t makin’ any sense. What’re you talkin’ about? Help who? Why aren’t you in there?” Barb started to rush down the hall, getting closer to the room.

“It’s Drew. Drew is the GSW. Oh God, Barb, it’s bad. It’s so bad. Please. You’ve gotta get in there,” I pleaded with her.

Barb stopped short of the doors, turned back to me to say, “I promise, I’ll do everything I can,” then sprinted into the room.

“Barb, wait. I want an…update.” But it was too late, the door was closed and the curtain drawn. Now I had to wait, something I didn’t do well under ordinary circumstances. Being on this side of the door was a horror I had never contemplated.

Pacing the corridor, I thought of the times I came out here myself telling patients’ families to have a seat and someone would be out shortly with an update. Heaven help the person that tried to say that to me right now. Chances were good I’d punch them in the throat if they did. I really didn’t know the extent of Drew’s injuries, but I knew enough to surmise they were bad. Really bad.

Standing across the hall from Drew’s room, I shed my gear, then leaned back against the wall and slid down until I clutched my knees to my chest. Dear God. This wa
s
no
t
happening.

Our father walked out on us when I was nine years old, then my mom was killed in a drunk driving accident two weeks before my eighteenth birthday. There was no way God would be cruel enough to take Drew from me too. Silently, I prayed to the heavens above not to take the only family I had left. Drew wasn’t just my brother, he’s my rock. He has always been there for me, even when I didn’t want him to be.

Pulled from my thoughts as a strong, hand landed on my shoulder, I looked up from my not so comfy spot on the floor to see Bobby Gray, Drew’s best friend and partner. He held out a calloused hand to help me up from the floor.

Wrapping his strong tatted arms around me, he pulled me into a tight hug and whispered, “I am so sorry Lei. What can I do?”

Tears threatened yet again, but I pushed them down. “There’s nothin’ we can do. They won’t let me in there with him. They haven’t even come out to tell me anythin’. I don’t know what to do right now…damn it. Please tell me y’all got the asshole who did this.”

“Yeah, we did babe. Drew actually got him. Clean shot right between the eyes. Dead before his sorry piece of shit body hit the floor.” Whispering so quietly I could just barely hear him, Bobby added, “’Tween me and you, I put another one in ’em just for good measure. Seems like he deserved it.”

Bobby released me just as the curtain and door to Drew’s room flew open. Barb was perched on top of Drew, counting out chest compressions as they ran down the hall toward the elevators that went up to the OR. Dr. Miller nodded once, signaling me to walk with him.

“Leila, quickly. We’re lookin’ at a single GSW, left chest with hemothorax. We got a chest tube in and are movin’ to the OR. I’m not gonna lie, it’s bad, but we’ve seen worse cases come in and walk out. Drake’s on and Barb said she is staying with him. I’m gonna go up and assist. And before you ask, he’s not regained consciousness. I’ll send you a text in a while to update you,” he said hastily looking back toward me while still moving toward the elevator.

In the blink of an eye, he was gone and my heart sunk. Although I was surrounded by a truckload of officers I considered friends, I felt hopelessly alone.

I couldn’t lose my brother.

Mustering courage I didn’t feel, I gestured to the crowd. “Hey, y’all don’t need to sit around here and wait. I’ll tell Bobby as soon as I have an update. Ya know, it’s probably gonna be hours before Drew comes out of surgery and the waiting room up there isn’t very big. Go on home. Bobby’ll send out a text as soon as we know more.”

Heads nodded in agreement and after a few mumbles, the SWAT guys slowly filed out of the corridor. Everyone left, except for the two who I knew wouldn’t budge. Bobby and Jasper. They were family.

Jasper walked over, draped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me toward the elevator. “He’s gonna be okay sweet pea.”

Bobby shook hands with the last few guys as they were leaving then turned to follow us up to the waiting room to wait for news about Drew.